It is a rare thing indeed to watch God do 90% of the work to fulfill a thing, while we, astonished, look on.

God speaks, we hear, and we act in Christlike character in accord with that invitation. A vision given is a welcoming to move forward toward a promise, not a promise that God is somehow obligated to fulfill without yours or my concerted participation.

Our creative and obedient response to God’s invitations – this is the artful life.

Looking through the lens of Advent and Christmas worship, we see the coming of the New Year.

We’ve prepared a “turning of the times” gift for our e-resource and blog friends, and their worshipping communities. It is a prayer meant to be read by families and congregations in worship – asking God for fresh vision for the coming year.

Click here, or on the image below to download the New Year Community Prayer. Feel free to forward this on to others. If you’re already on our e-resource list, it will just ignore your email when you enter it (so relax, no duplicate emails will come thy way!).

We hope this serves you and your community well.

Acts of worship (I’m specifically speaking now of worship through sacramental expression) are most fully about reclaiming memory.

When we remember, we connect, we pray, we offer, we delight, we repent, we appreciate, we hope, we help.

We all suffer from an amnesia, or loss of memory, that keeps us distant from our original Relational Center, and that ultimately destroys our right-relatedness to the rest of creation – both animate and inanimate. The term “anamnesis” is a term that speaks of an intense experience of memory that virtually places us as an actor within the story once again. We long for such an experience as this when it comes to our origin story. As Madeleine L’ Engel said, “I can’t wait until I remember how to walk on water.” Worship hearkens back to that state of affairs, and moves us in a circular destiny toward our original meaning.

When we worship, we remember who we are, our context in this vast universe, and our responsibilities born of our stewardship vocation before God. When we worship, we delight in the correct center of universal reality – an eternal Person.

To create these liminal spaces, these threshold venues of connection again to our gifted past as we connect to the One who tethers us to that past, is the role of the one who purposes to lead others into worship.

We are MemoryBearers, ThresholdCrafters, EdenReminders – when we lead worship.

Our summer online course, Essentials Blue: Online Studies In Worship Theology and Biblical Worldview is just wrapping up, and our students are getting creative. It’s been an amazing time growing and learning together as worship leaders and creative influencers, and now it’s time to put feet to the learning.

Each of our students has been asked to present a “creative project” of some sort that meets our criteria, and embodies some aspect of theological/worldview insight(s) they gleaned from the course. We’re excited about what is coming in.

Posted in the comments section of this post will be links to their projects. Enjoy, and let them know what you think! It may take a few days for their links to get up here.